A.L. Rowse, the Bard’s best-known researcher, gets his hour to fret on the stage

That’s
how things shake out if you talk to Andrew Harris about his latest play, The
Lady Revealed.

“A.L.
Rowse is probably the best-known Shakespeare historian,” said Harris, a member
of the University of North Texas theater faculty. “He wrote more than a hundred
books, and it was Rowse who claimed he discovered the identity of the ‘dark
lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

It’s
Rowse, a difficult and obsessive sort of man, whom Harris champions in a play
that both humanizes the Bard and gives a rare voice to the otherwise anonymous
Elizabethan lady.

Harris
spent a few years studying Rowse. The Cornish academic was born to a humble
home in Cornwall. His father was a clay worker and his mother a former servant.
Both brilliant and dogged, Rowse was a little on the prodigious side. He penned
poetry that earned attention in school, and he nabbed the only county
scholarship to the University of Oxford. Rowse studied at Oxford’s Christ
Church College, where he was persuaded to study history. He was given a
fellowship at All Souls College, where students pursue research rather than
degrees.

Harris
said he found a meaty subject in Rowse. The historian had political
aspirations, hopes that he might have fulfilled if World War II hadn’t dealt a
crushing blow to Britain.

Even as
Rowse’s tenure at All Souls ended, the historian kept studying and kept
publishing. And Rowse wasn’t a shrinking violet; his book Homosexuals in
History was a scandal when it was released in 1977 — his own homosexuality
wasn’t a secret.

In his
older years, Rowse became a celebrity scholar — sort of England’s answer to
Truman Capote. Rowse had a sharp wit and a sharper tongue, and was noted for
his ability to wrap a lecture hall around his little finger with his authority
as a historian and a famous, strong personality. Rowse didn’t spare his fellow
historians his blistering critiques, going so far as to declare himself better
than those he recalled in Historians I Have Known, which came out in
1995, just two years before his death.

Harris’
play is about Rowse’s controversial and historic claim during the 1970s — that
he’d discovered the “dark lady” skewered in William Shakespeare’s sonnets to be
Emilia Bassano Lanier, the daughter of a Jewish-Italian family protected by
Henry VIII. Emilia’s father was a musician in Henry’s court — a job that
exempted the family from the exile of Jews from England that started in the
1200s and remained through the mid-17th century.

“The play
is largely about Rowse and how he thought his discovery would make him a
celebrity,” Harris said. “Instead, he was embroiled in controversy. But even
after all that, A.L. Rowse is still the most respected scholar of Shakespeare.
If you are into Shakespeare, a serious student of him, chances are you’ve read
some of Rowse’s work.”

Harris
takes his audience on a trip through three time periods. We meet Rowse in 1993,
on the historian’s 90th birthday. Harris then transports the audience to the
1970s, when Rowe announces his discovery of Emilia Lanier as the “dark lady.”
Harris then indulges his playwright’s license, and takes the play to Elizabethan
England.

“These
are my inventions, scenes between Shakespeare and Emilia that are in Rowse’s
imagination,” Harris said.

The dark lady finally has her say in Harris’ play. Shakespeare wrote a
series of sonnets printed in 1609 that mention three unidentified characters:
the patron, a rival poet and a dark musical lady. Rowse unveils them all.
Harris said Emilia Lanier is a compelling historical figure, too.

“She was
the first woman to publish an original of poetry in the English language,”
Harris said. “That’s quite a distinction, considering that the majority of
women in Elizabethan England were illiterate. Most of the men were, too.”

Harris
said history has revealed Emilia to be the paramour of one Lord Richard
Chamberlain.

“Chamberlain
was the head of Shakespeare’s theater company,” Harris said.

Theater
professionals were noted for their appetites for liquor and lust, and Harris
said a tryst between Emilia and Shakespeare is plausible. And, Harris said, it
was Emilia Lanier who penned the words “This world is but a stage where all do
play their parts. ... Here’s no respect of persons, youth, nor age.”

Harris
said he hopes his play will score another run after its world premiere at UNT,
where the production is directed by faculty member Sarah Vahle.

“I don’t
think I’m finished with it,” Harris said. “You don’t really write a play as
much as you rewrite it. I’d like to see it produced in a professional theater,
and of course I’d love to see it produced in London.”

THE LADY REVEALED

What: World premiere performance of the play by UNT
theater faculty member Andrew Harris

All roads
lead to ... Texas?

In his
research for “The Lady Revealed,” UNT professor and playwright Andrew Harris
found that celebrated Oxford historian and Shakespeare authority A.L. Rowse had
one very important link to the Lone Star State.

That link
is Emilia Bassano Lanier, the woman now believed to be the “dark lady” in a
famous series of Shakespearean sonnets.

In
researching a play about Shakespeare’s mistress, Harris traced the Laniers to
Paris, Texas, and a man named Pat Bassano. Bassano didn’t know about his
connection to a Shakespearean snub, but Harris said Pat and wife, Julie, have a
copy of the new play and plan to attend the opening tonight.

Emilia
came to Shakespeare’s bed by way of Venice. The Bassano brothers, musicians
from Venice, were invited to join the court of Henry VIII. They were court
musicians until 1641, Harris said.

“Don’t you
think it’s interesting that Shakespeare put a character named Bassanio in ‘The
Merchant of Venice’?” Harris said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. And
doesn’t it seem funny that Emilia published her own book of poetry [“Salve Deus
Rex Judaeorum”], which was about her conversion [from Judaism] to Christianity,
but also condemns men for blaming women for their own sins, was published a
year after the sonnets?”

The
Bassano brothers were housed in a monastery by the king to protect them from
pogrom — from being hustled out of England by a centuries-long decree that
exiled Jews like the Bassanos from the country.

“At that
time, there were fewer than 100 Jewish families in all of England,” Harris
said.

He said music
has been a recurring profession for the later Bassanos. The Bassano penchant
for writing was passed on, too. Emilia married Alphonso Lanier, another court
musician. Among the dark lady’s descendants: poet Sidney Lanier and playwright
Thomas Lanier Williams, also known as Tennessee Williams.

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